I’m slowly walking my way through The 2nd World Congress on Matriarchal Studies Conference, including, today, a paper called “The Utopia of a Motherless World – Patriarchy as ‘War System,’” by Claudia von Werlhof. Claudia is a women’s studies professor from the University of Innsbruck (Austria). Some sexy sound bites:
O Patriarchy is a threat not only to the few surviving matriarchies, but to humankind as a whole.
O The purpose of patriarchy is to build a utopia, but one based on war and elimination of mothers.
O The father god is a fiction; mother god is not.
O The old medieval alchemists were the “mothers” of the patriarchy: they (supposedly) created living matter out of dead.
O The aim of the alchemist was to create life without love, and without mothers.
O We still have alchemists: they create cyborgs and genetically modified organisms and such.
O In the patriarchy, violence is needed for creation: violence against nature, matter, and women.
O In nature, all death is followed by life. In patriarchy, death leads to violence and more death. Example: Genetically modified plants will first kill all other plants, and then die themselves.
O There is no infinite production on a finite globe.
O We are prisoners; we behave like inmates; we must break out; we can remember what is left of matriarchies; we can defend our alive parts from the patriarchy's dead parts.
O We CAN get the patriarchy out of our minds, emotions, and fantasies.
O Never in history has there been a people who know less about the Goddess and natural death than we do today.
O “Take the toys away from the boys!”
Go HERE to hear the entire address.
Go HERE to read a little more about Claudia
2 comments:
Good post! Right now, we are trapped in a war economy. Our government and the country's corporate owners make money from war. It removes young men (and now women) from the unemployment rolls, and creates an unending stream of profit. Every helicopter shot down is another sale for Bell Helicopter. Every bullet, every plane, every scrap of schrapnel is another dollar in the pocket of General Dynamics, Boeing, and a dozen other war traders. I hear Lockheed is now our number one supplier of contract killers. Those "private contractors" getting killed in Iraq aren't building bridges - they're mercenaries being paid with your tax dollars, bound by no treaty, code of ethics or law.
I wish we could organize a general strike against the war - in the mean time, there's a tribute to Rosa Parks planned for Dec. 1 where people agree not to spend money. It's a start.
Thanks for the links to this conference. I am so glad I found your site. Thank goddess there are still feminists who have not been assimilated. I try to remember Virgina Woolf's cry about the daughters of educated men. Blessings
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